Saturday, January 30, 2010

Curious to see how others viewed this same movie, I checked out a couple of movie reviewers I have often appreciated in the past.http://dove.org/reviewpopup.asp?Unique_ID=8184andhttp://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2010/bookofeli2010.htmlIf these links don't work, please visit Dove.org, and ChristianAnswers.net

Spoiler Alert: If you have not seen the movie, this review will tell you a bit of how it ends. Also, this review should be read by adults only.

"The Book of Eli" could have been an amazing, great movie. The premise sounded awesome to me. A man, who has heard the voice of God, is carrying the last remaining Bible across the continent in a post-apocalypse world. He faces heavy opposition, and discovers that he really carries more than one copy of the Bible, because he has memorized the text after 30 years of walking.

Unfortunately, the movie was horrifically, graphically violent. In the opening scene, a feral emaciated cat eats from a dead body in a close up camera shot. The hero of the story kills the cat with an arrow, and eats it for dinner over a fire. Within the first twenty minutes of the movie, we see two dead bodies with evidence of violent and suicidal death, a man shot, and a woman raped . . . although thankfully that is not a close up scene.

The main character is both comfortable and uncomfortable with the violence around him. It is obviously something he tries to avoid, but yet takes part in with a horrible efficiency.

If the hero hadn't shown some remorse for both his actions, and sometimes his inaction, I would have walked out of the movie theatre. Denzel Washington did a good job portraying a character who is conflicted by the level of violence in the world, and yet defending himself with expertise.

The basic storyline is a good one. The villian is believable. He is a warlord type figure who believes he will use the Bible as a book of power, as an intellectual hold over people that will force them to live in the way he thinks they should.

In the end, the hero fights his way free of the villians clutches, saves the life of another person, and gives up his written copy of the Bible, to continue to follow the direction of God, and then gives a word for word account of the Bible to a group that copies it and sends it out into the world. He then dies from his wounds, and the girl he saved leaves to return home with the hope that has been given her.

Again the premise is good, the execution is way too graphic and violent for my taste. I understand that the script-writers were trying to show just how horrible and hellish the world would be without the Word of God dwelling in it, but . . . I didn't need to see those images.

In my writing, I may be busily typing away, and yet waiting inside for that moment when the words fall into a rhythm with my thoughts. In the process of submissions, I find myself waiting for responses, and I try to fill those voids with writing, prayer, and positive encouragement.

2. Patience

Obviously waiting requires patience, and yet patience sometimes is needed even in those moments when I don't think I'm waiting. I need patience when I find myself brimming with emotion, especially if that emotion is anger. Each action I take, each word I speak reflects the state of my soul at that moment. Each action, and each word affects not only the people around me, but also my relationship with God. Yes, He is amazing and full of grace, but out of my forgiven freedom I have the honor to walk free and be loving. When I lack patience, I have fallen back into my old sinful self.

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Ephesians 4:2

In my writing life, my patience is tested when I find myself wandering from my plot, following around minor characters, or just not seeming to move my story forward, caught in characterization exercises in the midst of a story. However, if I patiently wade through these parts of my writing, I am often rewarded with richer characters, and a more character-driven plot.

3. Compost

This morning I received a devotional from Upper Room about compost. I skimmed it, and agreed with it, but I wanted to relate it more to my own experiences both with real compost and the compost that seems to clutter my spiritual and writing life.

Compost piles are smelly, warm, full of worms, sometimes slugs, beetles, spiders, rotting vegetation and dirt. If I had to pick up any of that stuff in my bare hands, I would choose dirt and worms because neither has ever bothered me.

However, if I think about it, the best worms, and the best dirt can be found only in a compost pile.

So, what does that mean for my spiritual relationship with God? Sometimes it seems my greatest failings, once fermented in and covered by God's love and grace, turn out to be my richest and most rewarding spiritual lessons. They are also the best soil for those times when I am actually asked by someone to share my faith.

In my writing life, sometimes my worst ideas become my best ones after a long time. Sometimes the stuff that I don't like gets churned around in my imagination, mixed with some good but overly ripe ideas and turned into something new and promising, like rich soil ready for planting or in this case, writing.

So, I'm trying to wait, with patience, for my compost to turn into rich, wormy soil.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Lately, I've been reading these wonderful and helpful posts with numbered bullet points, and thought I would try one myself. The last few nights my family and I have watched pieces of a Warren Miller film showcasing extreme skiing and snowboarding, so with that in mind, and the feeling I've been having about my story, "True Love's Gifts," here goes.

3 Ways that Writing and Extreme Skiing are Alike

1. You want to start with the right equipment.

No one wants to be caught in the snow in shorts, unless it's spring skiing season or that person is a extremely crazy Alaskan skiier. Having warm clothes, waxed, sharp-edged skis, and a helmet are a good way to start a ski day.

When writing, we need to have writing utensils like pen and paper, or a computer and a power source, an imagination, and some writing guides for helpful hints when it comes to tricky grammar, and technique.

Technical guides are like the helmet that protects us when we fall. I should probably start wearing a helmet more often.

The imagination is like those waxed, sharp-edged skis.

The warm clothes are like the basic writing utensils. I'm not sure if there is an equivalent to the spring skiing in shorts for writing utensils.

2. You have to get to the top of the hill. This can be done in three different ways: helicopter, chairlift, or hiking.

For writing, those hills we have to surmount are: fear, time, and high expectations.

Fear is a tough hill to climb, and I climb it every day with my writing. There are many different fears, and I feel that they are adequately described in Joanna Young's blog Confident Writing in her post, "Writing Superheroes."

Time is hard to make for yourself as a writer, and at the same time easy. How many minutes do we spend watching tv, sifting through old e-mail, waking up slowly over a cup of joe? We can find the time to write.

High expectations are also tough hills for me. I need a helicopter ride for this one. However, as David Turnbull, Barefoot Geek, and guest post writer at Write to Done this last week wrote in his post "3 Simple Tips to Effortless Writing," we need to "Ease the Pressure."

3. You have to be willing to jump off the cliff, ski through the moguls, and try a few tricks.If you aren't falling, you aren't learning.

The sensation of jumping off a cliff into the unknown often accompanies my writing. It seems like sometimes I know from the moment I jump that I am going to make the landing, or that I won't. Sometimes, however, I'm just falling and I'm not sure if I will land, or break my legs.

Getting through tough plotting moments in my writing and not allowing my characters to take me down a side trail are kind of like skiing through a field of moguls. I want to ride on the top of them, not get stuck in the valleys between them.

Writing exercises and writing characters or stories outside of my comfort zone are like trying tricks on my skis. I admit I'm not really an extreme skier, but I do have these really cool short skis and I try to do jump turns, spins and things like that. On more than one occassion, I've tumbled head over heels down the slope, or scooped up snow with the back of my jacket. This leads me to that last point.

Falling down and getting up are part of learning to ski, or learning to write. Every time I fall down, I have the opportunity to learn and get up. If I don't fall, I haven't pushed the envelope hard enough to learn anything.

Or as one of my favorite Christian bands, Superchick!, says "If I get up, I might fall back down again . . . So get up anyway."

Friday, January 22, 2010

Overwhelmed by a messy house,not even welcome for a mouse,we stayed home from the mountain,and house-cleaning is certain.

Whew! My writing is somewhere below "uninspired" at this moment.

I have yet to open up my story file.

Yesterday I felt energized by a writing challenge from Six Sentences. The editor is asking for submissions of "love" stories.

And crazily, I started another blog this morning, although I only plan to post there once a week. "Words" is about words, and how they shape our lives. Simple enough.

The only problem is that the subject is making me feel hyperactive about the many writing mistakes I'm seeing in this post. I may need to re-read Write to Done's guest post by the Barefoot Geek called "3 Tips for Effortless Writing". And now, real life is calling and my writing time is gone. Hmm.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

This past weekend, we had an amazing trip with our church youth group up to Mt. Baker and Lutherwood. The experience was awesome, and we loved it. The only downfall (other than less sleep than I like) is that I didn't get any writing done. I had a few opportunities . . . the drive was fairly long, but I didn't put pen to paper once. I had my notebook on my lap, and the last five pages of my current project printed out, but no writing. I just soaked up every experience.

So, today, I feel like I've returned and found my writing hard to start.

It reminds me of walking to my car in the parking lot and realizing that I left my lights on all day, and the battery doesn't have enough juice to get started. I'm thankful I drive a stick shift at times like that. When I can get the car rolling slowly forward, and then pump the clutch until . . . suddenly the car rumbles and shudders to life.

So, I hope that my writing starts like that old stick shift car of mine. I'm trying to get it rolling, and I hope to hear the rumble and shudder of life again soon.

Anyone else have a tough time starting up again after a "vacation" away from writing?

Sunday, January 10, 2010

One hero who chose not to be a zombie, or a sleepwalker, during his time was William Wilberforce. Check out this excerpt from the introduction to the book "Amazing Grace."

"Wilberforce saw much of what the rest of the world could not, including the grotesque injustice of one man treating another as property. He seems to rise up out of nowhere and with the voice of unborn billions - with your voice and mine - shriek to his contemporaries that they are sleepwalking through hell, that they must wake up and must see what he saw and know what he knew - and what you and I know today - that the widespread and institutionalized and unthinkably cruel treatment of millions of human beings is evil and must be stopped as soon as conceivably possible - no matter the cost." - Eric Metaxas

What hell are we sleepwalking through today? What injustice are we blindly putting up with in our lives?

"Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the live he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ." Romans 6:8-11

"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. This is how we now what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." 1 John 3:14-16

"Some speakers and writers use torturous for tortuous, especially in the senses “twisting, winding” and “convoluted”: a torturous road; torturous descriptions. Others, however, keep the two adjectives (and their corresponding adverbs) separate in all senses: a tortuous (twisting) road; tortuous (convoluted) descriptions; torturous (painful) treatments." - from Dictionary.com

So if I take the two words and use them in one sentence, I get something like: the walk up the tortuous road became torturous as it climbed steeply into the mountains.

I'm not usually a word of the day kind of person, but for some reason this struck me,in my lazy hour this Sunday afternoon.

I've been reading RayGunRevival.com stories, and just resting.

I "should" be getting some writing in, and I "should" be housecleaning but John is taking a nap, and I "should" be planning for a week of homeschooling, but I just haven't been feeling motivated.

I finally feel like writing, but I feel this need to move . . . or at least check in with my daughters, one of whom is reading, and the other who is . . . playing a video game???

So time to move . . . maybe clean quietly, plan a little, write a little, bake a few cupcakes and prep for my hubby's birthday dinner party?

Hmm. A slow start to the new year, in which my goals are: to clean out my closets and dust in the corners, to finish my book, to successfully home-school my daughters, to lose a bit of weight and regain muscle, and . . . to remember that I am free in Christ.

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